The West children were expected to perform assigned chores[6] and all six did seasonal work, the three girls picking hops and strawberries, the three boys harvesting wheat and hunting rabbits.

[49] Shortly thereafter, Rose began a relationship with Fred, becoming a frequent visitor at the Lake House Caravan Park and a willing childminder to Charmaine and Anna Marie, who she noted were neglected and whom she initially treated with care and affection.

[72] When her body was discovered, a short length of metal tubing was found with her remains, leaving an equal possibility she had been restrained and subjected to a sexual assault prior to her murder.

Rena's body was extensively dismembered, placed into plastic bags, and buried close to a cluster of trees known as Yewtree Coppice at Letterbox Field, about one mile (1.6 km; 1,600 m) from Much Marcle.

[78] In addition to her prostitution, Rose engaged in casual sex with both male and female lodgers within their household, and individuals Fred encountered via his work; she also bragged to several people that no man or woman could completely satisfy her.

Learning that Owens disliked her stepfather and was looking for a job, the Wests offered her part-time employment as a nanny to the three children then in their household, with a promise she would be driven home each Tuesday.

[79] In her subsequent statement to police, Owens stated that, at Cromwell Street, she was given a drugged cup of tea to drink, then again gagged and subjected to a prolonged sexual assault from Fred and Rose.

[105] The following morning, having noted Owens' screaming when one of his children had knocked on the door of the room in which she was restrained, Fred threatened that he and his wife would keep her locked up in the cellar and allow his "black friends" to abuse her, and that when they had finished, he would bury her body beneath "the paving stones of Gloucester".

[113][n 3] When Gough's dismembered body was found, the jaw was completely wrapped in adhesive and surgical tape to silence her screams, and two small tubes had likely been inserted into her nasal cavities to allow breathing.

[127] Heather and Mae West became the focus of Fred's incestuous[59] sexual attentions after Anna Marie ran away from home in 1979[128] after enduring a particularly severe beating from Rose to her stomach just days after being discharged from hospital for treatment of an ectopic pregnancy.

"[133] A strong suspicion remains that, by 1985 or 1986, Heather had been forced to engage in intercourse with her father,[134] as by the mid-1980s, she developed classic symptoms of the distress felt by victims of child abuse: these included habits of her biting her nails until they bled;[135] drinking alcohol; of warily watching her father through the corner of her eye wherever she was sitting or standing; expressing nervous fragility whenever in the presence of males; her sleep being repeatedly broken by nightmares; and her repeatedly bouncing back and forth as she sat on any chair.

Staff at the Hucclecote Secondary School, which Heather and her siblings attended, are also known to have expressed concern as to why Heather—a studious and obedient pupil—refused to obey orders either to change her clothing for, or shower after, sporting activities.

[138] Heather attempted to excuse these injuries as having been obtained in fights with her siblings, but confided in one close friend that they had been inflicted by her parents, adding that her mother considered her a "little bitch" who deserved her beatings.

In a statement given to Detective Constable Hazel Savage, Anna Marie recounted the extensive physical, mental and sexual abuse she had endured as a child at the hands of her father and stepmother, before agreeing to testify against both parents at their upcoming trial.

[151] In their efforts to gather further evidence, police and social services also spoke with Mae, who, having spoken with her 13-year-old sister and learned Louise did not wish to see her father charged, initially denied she had endured any molestation as an adolescent.

[152] Police then focused their attentions on tracing Heather in efforts to corroborate Anna Marie's claims of sexual abuse, but enquiries to the Inland Revenue and the Social Security department held no records attesting to her being alive.

[160] That evening, with the search team having left their premises and a uniformed officer remaining at Cromwell Street to guard the excavation site, Mae and Stephen observed their parents talking in hushed tones as they repeatedly glanced towards the garden from their kitchen window.

He confessed to strangling Heather in a fit of rage, then dismembering her body in the ground floor bathroom with a heavy serrated knife he normally used for cutting slabs of frozen meat.

Excavating the section of the garden where Fred had indicated he had buried his daughter's body, investigators discovered a mass of jumbled human remains encased in the remnants of a bin bag and intertwined with two lengths of rope.

[165] That evening, having been formally charged with his daughter's murder and questioned as to why police had also discovered a third thigh bone, Fred confessed there were two further sets of human remains in his garden, and agreed to return to Cromwell Street to reveal the locations of both graves; one of whom he named as Shirley Robinson, whom he described as being a former tenant and a lesbian who had been heavily pregnant with his child at the time of her 1978 murder;[124] the other victim he described (incorrectly) as being "Shirley's mate", but either could not or would not elaborate as to her identity.

This note—dated 4 March—read: "I, Frederick West, authorise my solicitor, Howard Ogden, to advise Superintendent Bennett that I wish to admit a further (approx) nine killings, expressly Charmaine, Rena, Lynda Gough and others to be identified.

Initially, Fred claimed these six victims had been killed when they had threatened to inform Rose of his infidelity with women, and that he had transported their bodies to Cromwell Street to abuse, dismember, and then bury in shallow graves.

The initially strict suicide watch having been relaxed,[184] on 1 January 1995 Fred West asphyxiated himself[185] in his cell by wrapping an improvised rope he had constructed from a blanket and tags he had stolen from prison laundry bags[186] around his neck, then binding this device to a door handle and window catchment, and sinking to his knees.

[189] An important early decision by the judge was to admit testimony related to the sexual mistreatment of three women by Fred and Rose, accepting the prosecution's argument that it established a pattern of behaviour repeated in the murders.

[190] In his opening statement, prosecutor Brian Leveson portrayed the Wests as sex-obsessed sadistic murderers, terming the bodies discovered at Cromwell Street and Midland Road "secrets more terrible than words can express ... [The victims'] last moments on Earth were as objects of the depravity of this woman and her husband".

[213] Prior to his suicide, police had recorded over 108 hours of tape-recorded interviews with Fred, both when he had claimed to have acted alone in the commission of the murders, and when he had attempted to portray Rose as being the more culpable participant.

Much of this information was disjointed or told in a third party manner; Fred claimed that he had extensively tortured the victims prior to their murder, but had not raped them, instead engaging in acts of necrophilia with their bodies at or shortly after the point of death.

In a five-minute service, in which no hymns were sung, the Reverend Robert Simpson quoted sections of Psalm 23, then added a solemn reminder to those present that they must "also remember everyone else who has also suffered because of these tragic events".

[255] When asked at trial why she had not spoken against the ongoing physical, emotional, and sexual abuse she had endured for seven years before running away from home when she was 15, Anna Marie emphasised that, as a child and adolescent, she had not known any other normality, adding, "[My father and stepmother] were all I had.

[265][266] Both of Rose's oldest biological children and her stepdaughter, Anna Marie, initially visited her in prison on a regular basis, although by 2006, she had ceased contact with them after Mae began asking questions about her culpability in the murders.